Sarasvati - Of Art and Knowledge

1. Well, it's back to work tomorrow. I really enjoyed the two four-day weekends in a row. With my position now being part of HQ rather than store operations, this is the first time in the fifteen years I've been with the company that I've been able to take extra time off during December. Since it's the busiest time of the year, there's a blackout period for any time off except with a doctor's note, but that only applies to the store side and not HQ. Since I will still be in this position for at least next year, we are considering taking a trip to Japan in December as well as our upcoming trip in April (previously we were considering going in October to see Tokyo Disney's Halloween, but we can do that another time). Anyway, not thrilled to be back to work, but hopefully it will be a productive week.

2. Tonight should be the last of the rain. It's showing rain tomorrow, but when looking at the hourly breakdown, it's like 1-2am tonight, so should be dry by the morning and then no more rain except maybe a brief blip on Tuesday (there's a weird one hour spike of chance of rain around noon on Tuesday). I'm so ready for it to be over! The tree in front of our house, as well as most of the neighborhood, is a ficus, which is currently in peak berry season, so the rain is bringing down tons and tons of fat gooshy berries that now cover everything, including the car. I'm going to stop in the car wash on the way to work tomorrow to see if I can get it looking less disgusting.

3. Neither Carla nor I are good at folding fitted sheets, and we don't really have a good place to keep them except on the top shelf above the dryer, so previously they were just sort of balled up and thrown up there, which does lead to them sometimes falling down. I finally decided to look into some sort of organization and found that these sheet organizers seem to be very popular. There are all sorts of similar items, but I liked the look of these the most. I got the sheets all packed up and now they're labelled queen and full, so we can easily tell which is which (there are some that we have in the same color and some where I forget which color is whose, as it's not obviously a color I wouldn't have chosen).

4. I was poking around today to see about possible tattoo artists to contact, and while I didn't settle on anyone, I did come up with a firm idea for my first tattoo! And it's something easy to explain, so that will help lessen the anxiety around that part as well. Basically, I was thinking about what else I like that could be good for a tattoo other than cats and dragons, and where I would like it to be, and I think something on my lower leg would be best. It would be covered at work, but I wear shorts like 90% of the time outside of work, so it would be a good place to be on display. Rainbow stuff is a good option as well, so I had the idea of a rainbow band around my lower leg, like down near the ankle but not on the boney bit. I think I'd like it to be fairly wide, like if you remember those wristbands people used to wear for sports in the 70s and 80s, about that thickness. I think it would look pretty cool and I'm excited about it, so now I just need to find someone to do it!

5. Tuxie!

Recently Finished
Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For
This is an Audible original adaptation of the early comic strips. It has an all star cast including Jane Lynch and Roxanne Gay, and I felt like the audio play format worked really well for it. It's a lot of fun and at only three hours, it's a good listen when you want to finish up something quick. It's also free if you have an Audible subscription.

The Labyrinth House Murders
This had an interesting framing, but overall felt weaker than the other two books in the series that I've read so far.

Wake Me After the Apocalypse
YA post-apocalyptic story about a girl who is one of the few people chosen to go into cryosleep and be awakened in two hundred years when a massive asteroid is predicted to hit earth and wipe out all life. But when she wakes up, she finds that a cave-in in their underground bunker has damaged all the other tanks near hers and completely blocked off the rest, so she's all alone. This sounded cool! It reminded me a bit of 7 Seeds. But there were too many flashback chapters in the first half to boring stuff about her falling in love with a boy in her group. If I am reading a post-apocalypse story I want the focus to be post apocalypse. Once the flashback chapters disappeared and the focus stayed on the future, it was more interesting, but still a bit disappointing. And this is the beginning of a trilogy, but the second book focuses on a different character in a different bunker, and from a review I saw, 99% of the book is pre-apocalypse, making it even less interesting. Then the third book has the two protagonists meeting and dealing with people from a third bunker, but the reviews made it sound like it wouldn't really be up my alley, so I'm not going to continue the series.

Silent Sister
A teenager wakes up in the hospital with no memory of the past few days and is told that she was found injured by the side of the road and her sister is missing. The story is told in alternating past and present chapters telling the story of the days leading up to the incident in the missing sister's POV and in the remaining sister's POV, the quest to find out what happened to her and her sister. ( spoilers for something that should be no surprise to anyone who starts reading this book ) The story itself was fine, but the gimmick just felt annoying.

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
This took me three and a half months to read but I finally finished it! It was very interesting, but also had a lot of in-depth detail about each head of the CIA that was a little on the boring side, which made it a slower read for me. But I went into this knowing virtually nothing about the CIA. It was never really touched on in school (most of my history classes ended after WWII) and in terms of popular culture I just had a vague "these guys are spies" association. As an adult, I osmosed that the CIA was responsible for a lot of shitty stuff around the world, but never really got into the details. So this was good for that! It turns out that the shittiness was not an exception, and that's pretty much all they did, but what most surprised me is that from the CIA's inception, these guys were pretty much Trump regime level incompetent. No one had any idea of what they were doing, and any successes they had were pretty much flukes. Anyway, I rated it a three due to the boringness of parts of it, but it really was a good overview and I'd recommend it for someone who's looking for something like that.

My Home Hero vol. 23-24

2025 Reading Roundup
For the third year in a row, I finished one book* per day, so I read a total of 365 books this year. That seems to be working well for me, so while I set my GR goal at 320 to give myself some leeway, I will be aiming for a book a day this year as well.

*I count manga, comics, audiobooks, and short stories along with full-length novels and non-fiction.

This year's tally of the categories I keep track of:

Comics: 58
Manga: 144
Adult fiction: 106
Young Adult: 9
Middle Grade: 31
Non-fiction: 17

Of those, 6 were short stories and 55 were audiobooks.

I read exactly the same number of non-fiction books as last year, but more adult fiction and middle grade and much less YA, as I am finding YA more and more annoying these days.

The combined total of manga and comics is less this year as well, and the audiobook count higher.

There were 10 rereads, all of which were comics or manga, and the reason for rereading was to refresh my memory in order to read a new volume in the series. (Two of them were for stuff I am scanlating, and I always count it as a reread when I finish translating a full volume.)

72 books were added to my to-read list before 2025, which is more than in past year (though not by a ton). The majority of manga and comics I don't add to my to-read list before reading, though, and same with the short stories, so as percentage of full length books, that's 46% coming from the to-read list, so that's pretty good!

I've been going through my to-read list recently and doing some pruning, since some stuff has been on there for almost ten years, and my tastes have changed, plus there are a lot of books that I added (especially YA stuff) because it was like "ooh, a [insert minority] character!" when that was more rare, and the plot or genre isn't really my thing, or I've already read several variations on the same theme by now and don't need another.

If you're curious to see the full list of what I read last year, this should take you to my 2025 tag on Goodreads.

Since I have another four day weekend, I asked Carla if she wanted to do something else one of the days, and she said she wanted to go to Universal again. The forecast has more rain for Saturday and Sunday, so we decided to go today since it was supposed to be clear all day (as of yesterday) and then no rain until around 3pm (as of this morning).

( Read more... )

1. It was rainy this morning but I managed not to get rained on. When I woke up, I could hear the rain and was not looking forward to going out in it for my morning walk, because then I'd get my shoes wet and have to wear wet shoes later, but I looked at my phone and the weather app said it was supposed to stop raining in five minutes and be dry for at least half an hour and it did and it was! I did get dripped on a bit by trees, but that was fine. And then later in the morning we went to Disneyland and it rained on the drive down, but stopped by the time we got there and was dry all afternoon and evening. We're still supposed to get some more rain here and there over the next few days, but at least it seems to be more sporadic.

2. We had a really nice time today at Disneyland. The rain helped keep people away (especially in the morning), plus although it's still officially the holiday season through the weekend, the crowds are just not as wild as they were in the lead-up to Christmas.

3. The shopping center where the newest Tokyo Central is in Irvine formerly had a Persian market called Super Irvine. I had originally assumed they went out of business or something and that's why the space was for lease, but it seems like the property owner had wanted to completely raze the building and start from scratch, and the Super Irvine just moved to a new location, which just opened a couple months ago. We watched a video walkthrough recently and it looked really neat, so we've been wanting to check it out. There are a bunch of Persian shops in Westwood, which is very close, but nothing this huge (and because it's so large, it has a lot of other international stuff as well as just Persian). Irvine is just a short drive from Disneyland (especially on a day like today with no traffic), so we decided to go down there before going home, and had a lot of fun checking it out.

4. I don't really do resolutions, but there are a couple things I want to do this year. One is to try doing a wider variety of things. I like routine and it's very easy to get stuck in a rut and do something familiar, whether it's going to the same places or eating the same foods, but there are so many other things I want to do also, so I want to try and change that. So we'll probably go to Disneyland less often this year, but we go ridiculously often, so even if we go only 2-3 times a month that's still, objectively speaking, a lot lol. And it was nice today; we hadn't been in two weeks, and it felt fresher and less like just doing the same old thing.

The other thing I want to do this year is get a tattoo. I have wanted to get a tattoo forever. I have always thought they were cool and wanted one, but the problem is I don't have any strong feelings about what I want. Maybe something cat or dragon related. Maybe something rainbow/queer. idk. I have to think about it. But I'll be fifty this year and it seems like a good time. Also I find the whole process really overwhelming, in terms of finding someone and the design phase, etc. Anyone who has tattoos and has advice/suggestions about anything, please feel free to comment!

5. I wish Gemma wasn't always so suspicious of me, but she is very cute when she's suspicious.

1. Just one more work day this week!

2. Today was mostly dry with a brief bit of rain late morning, but starting tomorrow we're supposed to have several wet days, possibly a whole week. I'm hoping it will be lighter than last week and mostly overnight. We'll see!

3. We had curry ramen for dinner tonight and it was so good. Carla discovered this one brand last year that has a bunch of different flavors, all of which she likes, but I've only tried the curry and now it's all I'm interested in having lol.

4. I finished this cute winter cats puzzle today.



I'm going to challenge myself with a 1000 piece one next, so we'll see how that goes.

5. Jasper really loves this lumpy basket in the bathroom lately. We got it several months ago to put the hair dryer in and no one cared about it at first, but then after washing the bathmat, I put it on top of the basket and suddenly everyone wanted to be in there (well, mainly Ollie and Jasper). Lately Jasper has been sleeping in there most nights, too.

1. The other day we watched a video about German supermarket food and there were a couple items we wanted to try, so I googled to see if there were any German markets neary and there is a place within walking distance that says it's a European market and cafe, so we decided to take a walk down there this morning. It turns out it is mostly German stuff and although the market part of it is about the size of my bedroom, they did have those items (red cabbage and apple pickle, and a plum jam) as well as a couple others. The cafe part was very busy and had no open tables, and also the menu seemed very heavy and we didn't want a big meal right then, even to share, so we skipped that part, but as we walked a couple blocks down the street we came across a French cafe and poked our heads in there and ended up getting a jamon beaurre (super delicious) and a cherry cheese tart (also super delicious). There was also a little Italian shop next to the German one, though they were closed for some reason even though the hours said it should be open, so I guess that part of the street is a random little collection of European shops lol.

2. Years ago when we used to walk down to the mall and stuff all the time we would pass this Caribbean restaurant that we always said we should check it out and never did. That was like 20+ years ago, and then a few months ago we watched a video where a guy walked the length of Santa Monica and tried out several different eateries on the way and that was one of them! We were glad to see it was still in business and vowed to check it out for real this time. Well, it was on our route today to the German market, so we stopped by to make sure they are still still in business, and then tonight we decided to order from there. Everything was delicious and we will definitely be eating there again.

3. Molly's always being such a cutie.

1. We had a nice lunch at Knott's today. I'm glad we were able to get over there one more time before the end of the holiday season as they have some really good seasonal offerings on the menu right now.

2. No rain! It's so nice to have a dry day. It was sunny but not hot. Looks like we're supposed to have rain again by the end of next week into the week after, but at least we have a few dry days in between.

3. We went over to Handel's tonight to get some peppermint bark ice cream but they are out. The girl at the counter said they might still get some in, but she wasn't sure. At least it's close enough and on the general path of our neighborhood walks that we can pop in here and there to see if they've got it back. We did get some other flavors to bring home, including gingerbread cookie, which I hope is as good as the peppermint bark.

4. I've had some sweaty nights lately (fun) so decided to wash my whole pillow rather than just the pillowcase, but this new pillow is a pain in the ass to wash. Well, the washing is fine, it's the drying. It's got this fiber fill stuff that just does not want to dry, even after multiple goes in the dryer. Finally I hit on the idea of taking the filling out and spreading it out between these four mesh laundry bags we have and drying it like that, which I think will do the trick. For one thing, the mesh bags will get heat to the filling much easier than the thick pillow exterior, plus dividing it into four bags will help spread the filling out so there's not this inner core that's just not getting dry. Fingers crossed! I do have an old pillow I can use tonight if this doesn't get dry, but I've still got a few hours until bedtime.

5. Chloe's such a sweetie. *_*

It was a busy day at the park, being a holiday weekend plus the first sunny day in a while. The park opens at nine and we got down there around 9:45 and the line for parking was super backed up, but thankfully the ADA lot still had a ton of spaces left, so once we finally got to it, it was easy to get a spot. The lines for the front gates were probably the longest I've seen, but still moved pretty smoothly.

( Read more... )

I think this will be our last amusement park visit of the year. We're planning on Disneyland on the 1st, but it's supposed to rain again, so we'll see.

This year my totals are 79 at Disneyland (including 4 at Tokyo Disney), 4 at Knott's, and 2 at Universal Studios. That's a lot! O_o